The permanent removal of fat from the human body is a highly desirable but very difficult undertaking. Dieting or learning good eating habits are effective to a degree but are not long-range solutions for most people; nor are these approaches effective in situations where undesirable fatty deposits are localized in the body.
Typically, fat cells are produced by the human body only until puberty. Thereafter, the then existing fat cells expand and contract with the accumulation and release of fat but do not change in number. If fat cells are destroyed after puberty, the remaining fat cells will attempt to compensate to some degree, but about 70% of the fat in the destroyed cells is never recovered by the body.
A conventional method of destroying fat cells is lipolytic therapy, or liposuction, in which all or part of the subcutaneous fat cell layer in the target areas of the body is surgically removed. This is a highly invasive and potentially disfiguring procedure with a prolonged and uncomfortable recovery due to the resulting separation of the skin from the body. For that reason, liposuction is not practical for weight control therapy, but only for body reshaping in limited areas.
In order to make fat cell destruction therapy practical for weight control, it is necessary to so destroy fat cells that a sufficient network of subcutaneous tissue remains to support the skin while the destroyed fat cells are absorbed and the subcutaneous tissues heal. In other words, fat cells must be destroyed in small, discrete, unconnected areas in any given treatment. At the same time, it is necessary to destroy fat cells in sufficient number and rapidly enough to make such therapy practical. No prior art has been able to accomplish this.
Also, there have been attempts in the prior art to selectively destroy tissue by hyperthermia, i.e. ultrasonic heating. In the prior art, however, such procedures have raised temperatures in the destruction zone to about 40.degree. C. At that temperature, it takes minutes or even hours of exposure to destroy tissue.